Many different kinds of computer systems are currently in wide use. In some environments, different instances of a given computer system are deployed at different locations of a given organization. In some such systems, attempts have been made to keep certain items of data synchronized across the various deployed instances.
By way of example, some such computer systems include business systems. Business systems can include, for instance, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, customer relations management (CRM) systems, line-of-business (LOB) systems, among others. Such business systems can store business data records in the form of entities. By way of example, a customer entity may represent different aspects of a customer (such as the customer's name, account number, address, etc.). A vendor entity may represent a vendor. A product entity may represent one or more products. A proposal entity may represent a business proposal. A quote entity may represent a quote, and an opportunity entity may represent a business opportunity, etc. These are only a few examples of the different types that are represented by entities in various business systems.
Also, in such business systems, the entities may include information from different data structures in a database. For instance, a single entity may represent information that is extracted from one or more different physical tables in a data store.
Some organizations wish to keep certain items of data synchronized, across all of the various instances that deploy the business system. For instance, it may be that a user organization has different physical locations, each running an instance of the business system. Yet, the organization may wish to maintain information represented by the customer entity in sync, across all the various instances.
Currently, synchronizing data among various instances of a computer system is often done using data replication. Data replication is often performed on the physical table level. That is, the user organization specifies the underlying tables that are to be synchronized, and data in those tables is simply replicated from one instance of the business system to the others. This is often a very tedious process which requires a great deal of customization to the business system. Because each of the instances of the business system may be set up or configured slightly differently, a great deal of effort is needed in order to insure that table-level replication is accurate.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.